Every year on the third trimester, DLSU holds a preconfirmation for those who passed the entrance exams and were qualified for admission. Yesterday, I was invited to give a speech to the would be Frosh of CCS-CT.
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4th year highschool is always a good point in one's life. it marks, among other things, an academic milestone and is a point of transition as well.
a long time ago, i was in the same situation you are in right now. i too was at a point wherein i had to inevitably make not one, but two very important decisions.
the first one was to decide what course i would like to take in college. it goes without saying that the course someone takes almost usually determines one's trade later in life. a course in architecture almost always produces an architect and a course in biology almost always produces a doctor. my mom and dad are both in the medical field. my dad is a surgeon and my mom is a nurse. i would like to think that, if it weren't for their common interest in the medical field, they wouldn't have met. looking back, i too harbored dreams of becoming a doctor myself. which is perhaps why it was a bit of a surprise when i finally handed it my college applications stating that i wanted to take a computer course. what had triggered my momentary insanity? it wasn't that i was computer savvy or because i had a knack for writing computer programs. the truth, was far from that. in fact, it was the exact opposite of the continuum as i absolutely had no idea what a computer was even though we had one at home, i didn't know what a program was, i didn't even know what the web was in when so many of my highschool batchmates spent their off-school hours chatting in the mirc.
so again, what made me think that i wanted to enroll myself in a computer course? how did i, in all my reasoning manage to come up with a notion that i who had zero background on computers would last in a computer science course?
well, to tell you the truth, it was the very trivial thought that i didn't want to become computer illiterate at a time like this. at a time, when it was the boom of the internet and the world wide web. at a time where computers and the internet was a technology that greatly influenced our lives. that thought was what compelled me to make my first decision, that i wanted to earn a degree in computer science.
that of course, was just the half of a whole.
now that i knew what i wanted to take up, there is still the task of selecting the university i wanted to earn a degree from. i passed three college applications all stating that i wanted a computer science course and i took three college entrance exams. i took one for DLSU, one for UP and another for ADMU. thankfully, i passed all three exams and in all three, i got my first choice for a course. in DLSU, i was qualified for BSCS major in Computer Engineering, in UP i was qualified for BSCE and in ADMU i was qualified for BSCS with Physics.
since i'm standing here in in a preconfirmation session for DLSU, it is needless to say that i choose to go to lasalle. and the heart of my decision? feedback. every person i asked what the best university was to go to if i wanted to study computer science told me lasalle. every one. my classmates, my schoolmates who had gone to manila to study, my aunts and my uncles and my cousin who was 2nd yr college in during that time. all of them told me that lasalle was the best college to go to to earn a computer science degree.
back then, i took their word for it and decided to go to lasalle. now, as an alumni, a faculty member and someone who actually went through the curriculum, i now know that there was truth to their conviction. with competent professors and top of the line laboratories and facilities to complement and enhance theories taught in the classroom, it's hard not to be at your best. it's hard not to learn. it's hard not to be transformed.
so how did i, someone who had no computer background and knowledge fare in la salle? after three years through the course, the girl who knew nothing about computers was employed by Canon as an on-the-job trainee. A year after, the girl who knew nothing about computers built a robot as her thesis and was awarded a Most Outstanding Thesis Award. Still a few months after that and sometime before her graduation, the girl who knew nothing of computers was contacted by Azeus and was later hired as a Junior Software Developer. On October of 2004, the girl who knew nothing of computers graduated Honorable Mention from DLSU. Today, the girl who knew nothing of computers is co-founder of UPStrat, Inc. a startup company that offers clients web-based solutions.
Now, you have two very important decisions to make in your life as did I and so many others before us. First, you have to decide what you want to be in life and second, you have to decide where you want to go to become what you want to be in life. It doesn't matter what your decisions are going to be. The important thing is to make one. As Harvey Mackay said, "People begin to become successful the minute they decide to be."
Good day and thank you for spending your time with us.